Keywords: urban economy; town-planning; metochions; Balkan influences; Mount Athos
The authors, trying to discover some fixed elements in the urban development of the cities of Moldavia, focused their attention on a church located in the historical area of the city of Iaşi. At the end of the 16th century, after the Saint Sava Monastery was established by monks coming from Jerusalem, with the support of Moldavia’s Prince, a series of monasteries will appear in the city. One of these is the Golia church, which, at the beginning of the 17th century, was transformed, at the founders’ desire, from a parish church to a monastery church as a metochion of Mount Athos. This status and the position that churches like Golia occupy on the city map impose a given type of organization of the surrounding area. The neighbouring space gets an obvious economic nature, as along an intensely circulated thoroughfare there are plenty of shops and workshops, most of them on the church’s land. In the same areas inns are built, whose incomes are intended to the monasteries as well, and in order to facilitate the circulation, the Court starts in these places pavement works too. All these elements can be identified in the area in front of the Golia Tower. The resemblances observed led to the conclusion that this type of organization of the urban area was not the result of fate, but it pertained to a well-outlined town-planning system. Looking for possible influences for the apparition of this model of urban organization, the authors realized that in the same period, in the Balkan cities, the commercial areas included workshops and shops along a covered or uncovered thoroughfare, where the traffic was improved by paving. In the same complex, there were the caravanserai and the stables. All these arrangements were exclusively the job of the central authorities and not of the citizens.
More...Keywords: Giurgiu town; The Ottoman Empire; foreign traveler; Danube port; Wallachia; Ottoman administration;
Taking into consideration the conceptual reform process of the Romanian historiography, the history of cities can be a real challenge by highlighting certain known elements which might be poorly represented. The history of Giurgiu is inextricably linked to the Danube River, the river being the one to emphasize both its economical importance – port, customs, river crossing point and junction on the route of important trade corridors linking the Northern Danube area and the Balkan Peninsula, - and its strategic importance – a well fortified city protected on one hand by islands of different sizes and by the Danube River branches, and on the other hand by its vicinity with the capital city of Walachia. Ottomans – who ruled Giurgiu between 1420 and 1829 – were interested in the direct control of Giurgiu, imposing here a very strict administrative governance, representative for the whole Empire, touched by the tolerance towards infidels in order to maintain peace, good management and fiscal profitability. As a matter of fact, the Ottoman Empire had an important role in the development of the city of Giurgiu in the medieval period, being part of a state with geographical connections across continents. The accounts of different people that in time transited Wallachia, people generically known in the Romanian historiography as “foreign travelers”, offered a very good picture of Giurgiu during the Ottoman administration. Thus we can find all the necessary elements for defining a city with a dominant Oriental characteristic, of Ottoman influence: a medium-sized civilian settlement, a cosmopolitan population, although dominated by Wallachians an economically and port-adapted intense life, adjusted to the Ottoman economy, fragile elements of cultural activity and religious marks of a lifestyle dominated by Islam, but tolerant of other faiths.
More...Keywords: Romanian sociology; communist regime; institutionalization
Th is paper aims to evaluate the place of Romanian sociology during the communist regime by trying to reconstruct the regional and internal political context which led to the (re) institutionalization of that discipline. After experiencing a fertile period between the wars, Romanian sociology was This paper aims to evaluate the place of Romanian sociology during the communist regime by trying to reconstruct the regional and internal political context which led to the (re) institutionalization of that discipline. After experiencing a fertile period between the wars, Romanian sociology was “banned” at the end of WWII and the establishment of the communist regime. After two decades of “misery”, sociology was once again institutionalized in the mid 1960s in the context of an intellectual and political “liberalization”. The paper tries to explain the institutional development of Romanian sociology within Michael Voříšek’s methodological framework, discussing a series of indicators of a discipline’s institutionalization: research, teaching, professional organization, discourse, and label. The paper also analyzes the role of diverse factors (prewar tradition, political regime) in the development of sociology after WWII. It concludes by explaining that the tortuous process of institutionalization was due to the necessity to find the right timing when sociology was to be accepted as a legitimate and useful discipline, but also to the fact that sociology was only then able to individualize itself within the theoretical and ideological complex of Marxism-Leninism. theoretical and ideological complex of Marxism-Leninism.
More...Keywords: public intellectuals; dissent; Romania; ethical minimalism
Explanations for the relative silence of Romanian intellectuals be- tween 1945 and 1989 vary, though all center upon the regime’s ability to coerce and control intellectual circles through its repressive and manipulative tools, such as its political police (the Securitate), a nationalist discourse that equated opposition with betrayal and an incentive-based approach (economic and social benefits). While structural constraints as well as a particular nationalistic culture, explain the limited dissent, they do not account for why dissent happened at all. This article focuses on agency as well as context examining not just the factors that influenced dissent but also analyzing the various forms of dissent which occurred during communism. It takes a historical analysis approach and relies upon a dataset obtained through original, open-ended inter- views with leading Romanian intellectuals and primary sources (i.e. memoirs, open letters) to explain and analyze intellectual dissent. The article argues that individual acts of dissent show that despite the sophisticated mechanisms of indoctrination, propaganda and control, the party’s ability to atomize society was not absolute. Such Quijotic acts provided society with reference points outside the sphere of the Party itself and the grey zone of ethical minimalism
More...Keywords: democracy; democratic consolidation; electoral process; civil society; media independence; independence of justice; governance
If, regarding the fall of communism and the start of transition towards democracy of the Eastern and Central European countries we can talk about a common starting point, it is more difficult both methodologically and empirically to identify the time when the process of democratic consolidation itself begins. The fact that the revolutions of 1989 mark the start of the democratic transition tells us little about how the young East-Central European democracies would evolve towards democratic consolidation. The implosion of communism in Europe was due first of all to the disastrous social and economic consequences of the way the communist regimes operated and, secondly, to the fact that these countries were “helped” by a multitude of external factors. The nature of the political regimes before the collapse of communism, the way the transition from a political system to another was made, the level of social-economic development, the democratic traditions before the installation of communism in the Eastern-Central European area, the culture and the state of mind of the population will all constitute essential coordinates for unraveling the way the post-communist countries have evolved. I shall analyze the process of democratic consolidation in post-communist Romania, using the data supplied by the Nations in Transit reports elaborated by Freedom House, presented in a comparative manner for five postcommunist countries: Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.
More...Keywords: official biography, personality cult, Gheorghiu-Dej, communist regime, propaganda
The role of official biographies in legitimizing the communist leaders’ power has long been debated in the historiography. However, the Romanian scholars did not pay serious attention to the contribution of these writings in the making of Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej’s personality cult. Therefore, this article tries to find the roots and the evolution of this phenomenon analyzing one of the most important propagandistic instruments for the fabrication of the Romanian communist leader’s cult. One the one hand, a research of this topic is initiated in the hope of understanding the special role of biographies in a totalitarian regime. On the other hand, the study aims to emphasize that the function of the official biographies was to confirm the presence of the leader at the head of the Party. Finally, I will conduct a quantitative and qualitative study, in order to reveal the special role of Gheorghiu-Dej in the Romanian communist regime, in comparison with other representative leaders of the time.
More...Keywords: Romanian Communism, Denunciations, Repression, Letters to power
The communist party’s particular interest in the letters it received from ordinary people can be explained from at least two perspectives: on the one hand, the communist power orchestrated a presumed dialogue with society, and on the other hand it revealed the capacity of the people to adapt to the new norms and codes imposed by the regime. Aside from mentions in the official paper, „Scânteia”, or the resolutions written by officials on the letters, as well as the annual reports relating to the number and the topics of those letters, the real perspective of the authorities on all these documents is difficult to recreate. Official documents keep details about the general effort to respond to the complaints which are coming from ordinary people. The letters to power are direct proof of the interactions between leaders and led. They are especially valuable sources for understanding how the society functioned and adapted the rigours of political power. They allow us, on the one hand, to identify the reactions of society (revolt, approval, dissimulation), and, on the other hand, indicate the way in which the power reconfigured the political agenda according to the signals it received from below.
More...Keywords: Johannes de Byrthalben; Magister Lucas; Biertan; Birthälm; epigraphy; medieval; inscriptions; funerary art; grave stone; IO; church; heraldry; iconography; sculpture; stone carving.
The earliest tombstone preserved in Biertan (Sibiu) belongs to the priest Johannes, artis baccalaureus and magister, being one of the most beautiful and epigraphically interesting stone carving pieces. Its inscription has not been published yet. The study is an interpretation of the epigraphic formulae and of the tombstone iconography, bringing to light dates and information about Johannes, documented through the period 1476-1526.
More...Keywords: Keywords: Funerary inscriptions; Transylvania; style; media et infima Latinitas; imitation of the Antiquity.
Among other categories of inscriptions, the funerary ones are the most spectacular: evolving from the mere mentioning of the deceased person’s name, age, date of death, they add gradually Biblical quotations and moral comments, then become long eulogies in verse. The structure of a funerary inscription is analysed in its chronological development, from the following points of view: age, sex (funerary inscriptions for children, women, and men); priests/laity; high rank nobility/craftsmen, tradesmen; ethnic background (focusing on Saxons and Magyars) etc. There are many examples illustrating the return to classical models and the imitation of the pagan and Christian Antiquity in the Renaissance period: presence of the deities of ancient mythology (among them Parcae), funerary formulae such as hodie mihi cras tibi, Quod tu es ego fui quod ego sum tu eris, the extended use of the plays upon words, the dialogue between the deceased and the uiatores, but all of them are included in the Christian message which became more and more stressed in epithaphs of the early modern period.
More...Keywords: Mircea Eliade; communization; war in the East
In the context of the starting of the War in the East, Mircea Eliade, a press attaché and cultural councilor of the Romanian Legation in Lisabona, evokes in his Portuguese Diary a series of politico-military and geopolitical considerations, demonstrating intuition and political realism, and especially an undissimulated interest and an agonizing anxiety regarding the fate of Romania. At the same time, throughout the dramatic deployments on the east front, Eliade condemns defeatism, capitulating and negotiating spirit shown by certain Romanian politico-diplomatic circles, intimately hoping to the Anglo-Americans’ victory, eluding their alliance to Stalin. The Romanian’s defeat in the East more and more visibly indicates the apocalyptic vision of the communization of Romania and of Eastern Europe. This dramatic end as expression of the terror of history is more and more present in the savant’s consciousness after the disaster of Stalingrad and the tragedy of the Romanian army of Cotul Donului. Reflections and interpretations in the Diary reveal not only the interest of a diplomat on mission to serve his country but especially the consciousness of a first rank Romanian intellectual, of a "Romanian fanatic", as he would himself designate himself, attentive and participating with his heart to the catastrophe which was about to take place.
More...The re-educational processes represented a statutable aspect within the complex reality of totalitarian regimes. "To re-educate" in a non-democratic system means to forcibly inoculate somebody with information, beliefs or attitudes that apply to the totalitarian society. The "new human being" was to be created, and the prisons seemed to be the perfect places to find people that could be transformed into "new human beings", which were supposed to neither need a certain system to refer themselves to, nor to be able to place themselves into a certain context. The re-education system in Romanian prisons had several sides such as: Piteşti re-education type - an atrocious experiment based on self-criticism and adhesion under the pressure of continuous physical torture; re-education through labor -a method proffered by the regime but also a very traumatizing reality -that was applied in all Romanian labor colonies; Chinese re-education type, applied in Aiud prison...
More...Keywords: Le Maramureş; Moyen Age; Roumains; Ruthènes; interférences ethniques.
Le Maramureş du XIVe siècle peut être conçu comme le produit corrélé de deux mondes différents qui ont interféré : un monde de tradition romano-byzantine et d’influence byzantino-slave, représenté principalement par les orthodoxes roumains, et un monde de type occidental (avec des éléments de tradition gentilice), représenté par les autorités catholiques hongroises, l’Église catholique, les « hôtes ». À mesure que l’élite dominante des Roumains s’est rapprochée de la royauté et des autorités hongroises, afin de préserver son statut (une autre préférant se retirer en Moldavie), aux sujets roumains déjà existants s’ajoutèrent d’autres Roumains, du voisinage, et notamment des Ruthènes, descendus du sein de leur peuple, du Nord. Pour plusieurs raisons, mais notamment en considération de la confession commune et du statut social similaire, les sujets ruthènes se sont surtout rapprochés des sujets roumains, partageant avec eux le même sort. Des propriétaires terriens ont commencé, à partir du XVe siècle, à s’élever du sein des Ruthènes, se rapprochant, tout comme les knèzes roumains, du statut de la noblesse hongroise. Les deux communautés orthodoxes – roumaine et ruthène – ont subi la pression de l’Église catholique, suite à laquelle une partie de leur élite embrassa la confession occidentale. Grâce à ces aspects, le Maramureş historique, « pays » d’environ 10 500 km², situé à l’intérieur d’une large bande d’interférence entre Occident et Orient, qui commençait à la mer Baltique et se terminait à l’Adriatique, demeure un fascinant creuset de cultures et civilisations, véritable symbole de l’Europe multiculturelle et pluriconfessionnelle.
More...Keywords: Filioque; Heresies; Photios the Great; Gregory II of Cyprus; Gregory Palamas.
A Patristic Critique of Filioque: Saint Photios the Great, Saint Gregory II of Cyprus and Saint Gregory Palamas. Patriarch Photios, the first one to systematise the Eastern arguments against the Filioque addition, had perceived it as a toned down echo of Pneumatomachism, Sabelian Modalism and Plotinian emanationism and as an innovation which introduced the diarchy within the Holy Trinity. The Tomos of the Constantinople Council of 1285 is extremely significant; drafted by the Ecumenical Patriarch Gregory II, it is the single synodal document of the Orthodox Church which makes a direct, detailed and soundly argued reference to the Filioque, as a teaching in its own right, and vigorously condemns it. Its polemic features aside, the trinitarian theology of the 1285 Tomos has an authentic ecumenical perspective, as it offers the only positive solution to the Filioque controversy: while the Filioque is inacceptable with respect to the divine being, it may be valid with regard to the divine uncreated energies, the eternal manifestation of the divine nature in the Holy Spirit, through and from the Son. Saint Gregory Palamas provided solid biblical, patristic and logical arguments against the Filioque in his two Apodictic Treatises on the Procession of the Holy Spirit of 1333-1334, where he identified within the Latin theology a logic of separation which determines the exegetic de-contextualization, the philological thoroughness, the semantic reduction exclusively compliant to the text’s analysis and internal logic (on a hermeneutic level), and the autonomous rational construction (on a theological level). Consequently, the separation between Orthodox and Filioquist triadology resides in the very theological method. In the latter, dialectic thinking and essentialism prevail, whereas in the former, what takes precedence is the trinitarian understanding of the Holy Spirit, equally apodictic and apophatic, personalistic and ontological: it is the dogmatic of the holistic ‘ecclesial experience’ (spiritual, contemplative and rational) versus the dogmatic of speculative reasoning. To conclude, the Orthodox Church believes that the Filioque has been and still is a trinitarian heresy condemned by the pan-Orthodox councils of 879-880, 1285, 1484, 1583, 1838, as well as by the Holy Fathers of the Church, especially Photios the Great, Gregory II of Cyprus and Gregory Palamas.
More...Keywords: heritage; law; children; widow; will; “soul’s part”; Moldavia
Starting our research from the analysis of the testamentary discourse from the 17th century Moldavia, the aim of the paper is to identify those aspects that define the relation inside and outside family, precisely the place of a person in the dynamic of family relationships. There are two situations that we identified, which underline very well this matter - the first one deals with those that have no direct heirs and the second one refers to the regulation and the problematic generated by the inheritance of the soul’s part (“partea sufletului”). Taking into account the type of sources and the issues discussed, and bearing in mind that those times are defined first of all by the capacity of a person to own and dispose of his/her fortune, the present research will focus mostly on the juridical aspects.
More...Keywords: amarare; ambarcatiune; corabie; debarcare; Drobeta; emisiune; monetar; razboi daco-roman; pod; port; prora; pupa; reprezentare; sursa numismatica
The subject of boat representations underneath the bridge of Drobeta on a Trajan’s coin issue was not discussed so far by scholars. The AE roman coin is indicated in catalogues as RIC II 569-570, Cohen 542-544, BMC 954 and was issued from 103/105 to 111 A. D. On three nominals appear more than thirty variants. Much simplified, the small boat appers to be binded to a wooden pole with the stern, near the bank of the river. Many of those ships have one or two masts, a sail or rudders. Even people do appear. Due to the high degree of simplification, two categories can be considered: warships and utiliy ships. While warships appear several times, most of these boats are to be considered as being used for transport (perhaps even commercial). Regarding the period of time the coins were issued, we consider that these ships were used in the army’s logistics, right after the first dacian war.Some wooden poles appear to have been carved intentionally at one end, that’s why we presume they represent reused parts, probably from another ships. Also, their presence wouls suggest a curved shoreline, supposition confirmed by observing ancient and modern existing maps. Another item, seen more than seven decades ago, bear a similar image: on a forged marble medallion, appear three boats and wooden poles, on the opposite danubian bank. We consider the item to have had a real model, therefor the scene should be regarded as genuine, also being an evidence for the existence of wooden piers on the danubian shores during roman times.
More...Keywords: Anticommunism; Resistance; Ion Gavrilă; Făgăraş Mountains; Stalinism; Repression
One of the most important areas where anticommunist armed resistance acted was that of the Făgăraş Mountains – north side. After they acted, in 1948-1949/1950, in different subversive organizations, destroyed by the authorities, several young people from the towns and villages of the former Făgăraş county chose to flee in the mountains lying in the south of their region. The main advantage was offered by the geographical circumstances, here lying the most important massif in the country. The members of the group – which had different names: “Grupul carpatin făgărăşan” (Făgăraş Carpathians Group), “Grupul 73 Carpatin de eliberare naţională” (73 Carpathians Group for National Freedom), or simply Gavrilă Group (the Securitate used the name of “Gavrilă band) – were in their majority members of the Cross Brotherhoods, the youth organization of the Legionary Movement; they were university or high school students, but also blue-collar workers, farmers and foresters. The acknowledged leader was Ion Gavrilă. The fighters/partisans who actually wore the arms were few, even very few (11-14). They gradually learnt the tactics of the guerrilla war. They proved to be fair in their relationship to the civilians, a fact that even Securitate admitted in its numerous files. Given the partisans’ boldness and the fact they were shattering the Stalinist dogma of the absolute control upon the territory and population, the authorities brought there extremely numerous troops from the repressive structures. Securitate would admit somehow publicly, more than two decades after the neutralization of Gavrilă group, that this group and the Arnăuţoiu group (on the south side of the Făgăraş Mountains) were the ones against which the operative troops had carried on the “most complex and long-lasting actions”. The partisans succeeded in holding out for a few years, under very difficult circumstances. Without the locals’ help they could not survive but for a very short while. Hundreds and hundreds of people were maltreated, imprisoned and even killed because of the support they had offered to the resistance movement. The Securitate eventually infiltrated into the Făgăraş resistance group, as it happened in almost all cases we know in Romania. In 1955-1956, the armed members of the group were trapped and captured. They were tried, sentenced to death and executed at Jilava, where so many anticommunist resistance members from different places of the country died. The only one who escaped was Ion Gavrilă, who managed to hide for more than two decades. He was captured in 1976 and released after six months of investigations, as the facts had been prescribed.
More...The archaeological excavations from Gligoreşti debuted in 1990 and the first results were published in 1994 (Gogâltan, Florea 1994). In the same year, systematic researches begun and the excavations are still continuing. Taking this into consideration and also the fact that the rich archaeological material has not been entirely analysed (approximately 10 000 objects have been inventoried, drawn and statistically counted) the present report will deal only with the problems, which have been solved until now. Therefore, we will present the site’s stratigrafy trying to explain the sequence of living from Gligoreşti-„Holoame”. The report will also contain the special literature dealing with the problem, the geographical location of the site, methodological considerations about the archaeological investigation of the site, the ways of analysing the archaeological material and some ideas about the chronology and the culture to which this site belongs. In order to understand the site’s stratigrafy, three sections S1/1994, S2/1995 and S3/1996 have been dug. The entire excavated surface covers 497,25 square meters. It is important to underline that the first communities, which lived on, the island situated on the junction zone between the rivers Arieş and Mureş belonged to the Late Neolithic period. The dating has been based on the imported materials such as: the painted ceramic fragments of the Lumea Nouă type and on the two vessels decorated with heads of musical notes. The utilization of the decoration with bitumen applied after burning characterizes the Late Neolithic material from Gligoreşti. From a cultural point of view it is more than probable that all these indicate a new group of population, which penetrated the centre of Transylvania. Iuliu Paul questioned the cultural and the chronological positioning of the discovered material and considered that these problems will be solved in the future. However, the using of the decoration with bitumen connects the above-mentioned population to those from the northwest Romania. After more that one millennium and the half, other communities have been attracted by this place. Is referring to a number of families belonging to the Coţofeni culture, which occupied a small zone on the hillock. The ceramic finds are numerous and Petre Roman has related representative and them to the Coţofeni IIb and IIIa fases. It would be fruitful to analyse in a separate research the regional phenomena of the Coţofeni culture in Transylvania. The discoveries from Gligoreşti seem to cover, together with those from Sebeş-„Râpa Roşie” a horizon before Câlnic.
More...Keywords: Romanian-Russian relations; Congress of Berlin; Bessarabia; Carol I; I.C. Brătianu
This paper aims at analysing the way in which the Romanian political class related, between 1875 and 1878, to what may be called “the issue of South Bessarabia” (Cahul, Ismail and Bolgrad), restored to Moldova through the Congress of Paris (1856) and lost by the Romanian State after the Congress of Berlin (1878). Wishing to properly understand this matter, we have opted for an analysis from the standpoint of the Romanian-Russian relations, starting with the second half of the 19th century, when we witness a constant involvement of the Tsarist government in all south-eastern European matters. This is, in fact, the reason for our “incursion” in the history of the Romanian-Russian relations for the above period, in two episodes: 1866-1875 with different positions of the Romanian political actors towards the Tsarist government; the second captures the political-diplomatic tension Romania was faced with, following Russia’s violation of the commitments it made at the beginning of the Russian-Turkish War of 1877.
More...Keywords: Philokalia spirituality
Human experience proves that the sorrows, sufferings, pains and diseases are common facts of life and the man must prepare himself to confront them. Having their ultimate cause in original sin, amplified by personal sins, the dramatic and painful trials of life are rooted in man's thirst to buy more and more intense pleasure and joy. Therefore pain, disease and suffering are not proofs of God’sanger or punishment, rather signs of His merciful love for man, attempts to return him from the ways of sin and spiritual death to the true happiness, not only in this world, but also in the eternal life.
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